Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse, writing about the Colorado church shootings, says:
Given the spate of lawsuits brought by atheists and others who seek to remove Christian symbols and the outward manifestations of Christian beliefs from the public square along with attacks in media and on the internet, is it any wonder that Christians feel themselves besieged?
He goes on to talk about Christians feeling besieged in America, yada yada yada atheists have some blame to take for this atmosphere. Bull. I’ve written here numerous times that I don’t like the new brand of atheism as practiced by folks like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, but I think the culture that has pushed the idea of Christians being oppressed in America is full of crap. If anything this country has become more aggressively Christian since about the midpoint of the Clinton presidency.
The religious right has regularly acted as if they own this country, regularly asserting that America is “a Christian nation” which goes against the historical fact that the founders were largely deists or so disenchanted with religion controlled government they enshrined the distinction between government and religion in the founding documents. The religious right has made clear that if we are not like them that we are not true Americans, and yet still claim to be oppressed - making out institutions like the ACLU to be vast cabals of government influence when at the same time the leader of the government at this time is one of them, who fills government positions with their people from their universities no matter what their actual qualifications are.
It’s as if the New England Patriots at 13-0, killing everyone by 30-40 points said that they were really afraid of the Jets and winless Dolphins and someone actually took them seriously.
Link busted. I checked the site manually, with no luck. Do you have a screenshot or even a copy-and-paste?
I don’t follow Dawkins enough to know enough to like or dislike him. However, given the difference between Kennedy’s faith speech (I’m not a religious fanatic) and Romney’s faith speech (I am a religious fanatic) and the difference in American Politics, I’ll take Dawkins and may send him some money.
For a group of people that seem to dislike when others play the identity politics card, the besieged Christians sure do play the identity politics card an awful lot.
It’s back now, never mind.
“The new brand of atheism as practiced by folks like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins”. Oliver, that is the same as the old brand of atheism. The only difference is rather than mumbling it to oneself in the dark for fear of being ostracized, fired, and divorced (if not burned at the stake), now these people are publishing their thoughts in books. This is atheism, and I think the “new brand” of publishing unflinching books is still an improvement of the brand of theism that decrees “kill them all; God will know his own.” I know, I know — those atheists sure can be uppity.
Actually the brand of atheism they practice is “my belief system is superior to your belief system”. It’s a non believing Pat Robertson and just as much of a turnoff.